The Color Green
by sarahel239
Summary: The world is at war. People are being torn apart and made to choose whether they are on the side of good or with the Dark Lord. But what happens when the lines are blurred. Sometimes there isn't black or white. The only color is green.Pairing: SnapeLily


Chapter One: Owls and Idiocy

Lily was going back. She was riding on the Hogwarts Express and returning to school. Home was terrible, but it had become worse over the last summer. Her family was almost insufferable. You-Know-Who was rising, although only the wizarding community knew that it was happening. Her parents knew because Lily Evans was a witch. Ever since her parents had started reading _The Daily Prophet_ that she had delivered regularly, they had hung onto her as though her magic was the only thing keeping them away from certain death. Lily hated it. She had told them many times that she would probably be more of a hazard than a help, being a Muggleborn witch, but they didn't seem to agree. She wished that everything would go back to the way it had been.

Ever since this wizard had started his ascent to power, everything had gone to hell. People had started dying, disappearing, and attacking relatives for no reason. She could avoid it more at Hogwarts, though; everyone knew that Dumbledore was the only wizard that He Who Must Not Be Named feared. She sat there and stared out of the foggy window. It had been like that for a long time now. When the dementors had joined You-Know-Who, a thick fog had descended upon the city, but it wasn't the normal fog that often covered London. It was thicker, darker, and made it so that it was hard to see anything more than a few feet from you face. It was ever present, but she still hadn't been able to get used to it. Nobody had. Like the former guardians of the wizard prison, the fog had an effect on people; just looking at it depressed her.

When they left London, it started to thin. The clouds lifted and she was able to see trees and nature again. As the train whizzed by the scenery, she was able to see that it was summer, something she had never been completely sure of during the holiday. The farther they went from the city and her "home", the more alive everything felt. Slowly, she felt her own spirit come back.

She put her feet on the red plush train seat and pulled her legs up close to her chest. Gideon and Alice were sitting there in similar silence. They didn't need to talk now. The only noises in the compartment were that of Athena, Lily's owl, hooting slowly and the train puffing along the track. Lily thought back to her first time at Hogwarts and longed for those days again. She wanted everything to go back to how it was then. She remembered when she first read about magic and sorcery in her very first Hogwarts letter. It seemed so odd that there was a time when she didn't know that there was such a thing as magic.

The letter was just silly. Lily knew that very well. Witches and magic, those were the type of things made up to scare small children on Halloween. She had looked at it a thousand times in the last few days, but she checked again to make sure. There was the letter. She looked at the green ink again. It was definitely addressed to her and it said she would need to buy a wand and spell books, go to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on September the first and that she could bring a toad, cat or owl, but not a broomstick.

It must have been a joke. Something her sister and her friends had made. It was a ruddy useless joke since she never planned to show it to anyone, but it was the type of thing that her sister would do. She was a bit thick and she never had very well thought-out plans. Lily had to admit the owl was a nice touch. A large brown owl had flown through her window and landed right next to her a few days earlier. She wondered how the gang had trained an owl to deliver a letter; it even stuck out its leg.

The door slammed, and she quickly shoved the letter under her pillow. Her sister walked in, fuming.

"I can't believe it! How could Helen ask him to go to the pictures with her? She knows I've fancied him for ages. He is such a twit for accepting. I'll never speak to either of them again. I tell you I have had enough. I'll make sure both of them suffer tomorrow at school. Both of them will regret it, I tell you!" Petunia ranted on for a few more minutes. She wasn't what most people would call attractive, but she was still one of the most popular students at school. Correction: she was in the popular group of girls at the school. However, that was probably because she was able to find out the best gossip in the school and was willing to do anything to remain on the good side of her "friends". In return, they let her tag along, pretending that she was equal to them. Petunia wasn't cruel like the other members of the clique, but she was still as feared as they were. She believed in conformity and was rigid in her rules.

Lily let her sister go on with her tirade for a while. Once Petunia began to calm down, Lily reassured her that she was definitely prettier than Helen (which she wasn't), and that someday the boy would come around and realize how wrong he was (which he wouldn't), and that Petunia and the boy were destined to be together (which they weren't), and that her heart would heal and it wasn't worth all of this worry (which was quite true).

Lily then plucked up the courage to ask about the letter. She pulled the letter out from under her pillow. She turned the heavy parchment over in her hands and asked, "Petunia, did you send me this?"

"Send you what?"

"This." She passed the envelope over to her. Petunia stared at it dubiously.

"What kind of joke is this?"

"What do you mean? You sent it."

Petunia looked affronted and retorted, "No, I didn't. Why would I send you something silly like this? It must be an advertisement for some new crackpot school. I would throw it out if I were you, or better yet, throw it back in the postman's face for delivering such rubbish."

"But it didn't come by post," Lily replied confusedly, "it came with an owl."

"An owl? Really, Lily, how thick do you think I am?" Petunia said as she threw the letter back in Lily's lap.

Lily just sat there for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on. _A witch_? It was impossible. It made sense in an odd sort of way, but it just wasn't possible. It explained everything, but it just couldn't be.

Could it?

Lily suddenly let out of squeal of delight, causing Petunia to jump back into the closet doorknob and wince in pain. Lily flew down the stairs and ran into the kitchen to her mother. She was going to learn magic!

Two months later, Lily kissed her parents goodbye. A helpful man in a tweed jacket and polka dotted clown trousers had helped his children go through the wall between Platforms nine and ten and was waiting for Lily to say her goodbyes before helping her go through the bricks. Lily gave her mother one last kiss before turning to her sister. She knew that she would miss her. For all her faults, she was still her sister.

There had been a change in Petunia over the last few weeks. They were never extremely close and Petunia had always considered herself superior, but when it counted they were there for support. That was what family was for. Petunia became more distant and surly as her parent prepared for Lily's departure: as they got her books and supplies (the letter included directions to Diagon Alley); looked at her with pride when they saw her get her wand, which the shop owner said was particularly good for Charms work; and bought her an owl, which the pet shop owner assured them was the fashionable pet now. It was a beautiful gray owl, which she lovingly dubbed Athena.

Petunia had stood on the sidelines the entire time and grimaced and rolled her eyes. When Lily went to give her a hug, Petunia put one arm around her for a second and then pushed her away. The man next to her tapped her on the shoulder and told her that she only had four minutes before the train was scheduled to leave. Lily went with the awkwardly dressed man and they pushed her trolley and it slid through the wall and she found herself on a beautiful platform. She thanked the man and pulled her trolley down the platform until she came to a door. There she unloaded her trunk from the trolley and made sure that she had a good grip on Athena's cage. She was trying to lug the monstrously large thing up the stairs to the train when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

"Need help?" asked a boy at the door. He couldn't have been any older than her and had messy black hair. He was pretty short, but held himself the same way Petunia did. This made him seem taller than he actually was and gave her the distinct impression that although he looked pretty scrawny that he felt confident that he could lift the heavy trunk.

"Yeah, thanks," she replied and started to help him lift the piece of luggage. He pushed her hands off of it and insisted that he could handle it.

"I'm James Potter," he grunted as he dragged the trunk along the ground and the metal adornments scraped along the platform. "I'm going to be a Gryffindor. My whole family has been. I can't imagine anything worse than being a Slytherin or Hufflepuff." He had to stop talking then with the effort of lifting the trunk, and Lily wondered silently what Gryffindor was. Potter tried for a few minutes and got the trunk nearly upright on the stairs. He had to stop pushing for a second and his face turned the exact color of the apple that Lily had eaten that morning. Lily was positive that he was going to pass out from the effort. She was about to go up and help him with the trunk, despite his protests, when it balanced precariously on its side, fell back and hit Potter on the head. He rolled his head confusedly for a moment and passed out on top of half the contents of her trunk, which had spilled out when the trunk hit the ground.

Lily was at a loss. She had only two minutes before the train was scheduled to leave and all of her things were scattered around an inept (and unconscious) boy with an ego that would fill all of England and most of Ireland.

While she was slapping Potter and trying to get him to wake up, another boy walked by and looked at them dubiously. He had a hooked nose and greasy black hair. His black eyes held a bored and unfeeling expression. Her first thought when she saw him was vampire. She shook herself to bring her thoughts back into her head, but then she forced herself to stop thinking asinine things and focus on the situation at hand.

The hook nosed boy was stooped over and had such a forlorn look in his eyes that he seemed like he had years more of life experience and hardship than Lily and the dimwit ever would have. He pulled out his wand and made a long swishing movement and all of the contents of her trunk went back into the trunk. He then murmured, "_Aguamenti_," and water poured out of the end his wand. Potter started to choke a bit and the other boy murmured a couple more words that Lily couldn't make out as Potter and the trunk started moving by themselves onto the train. The strange group came to an empty compartment. The boy plopped the trunk in a corner and Potter on one of the seats and left without saying another word.


End file.
